Review: Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Lost Lake

by Sarah Addison Allen

The first time Eby saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard.  Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

That was half a lifetime ago.  Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby's past.  Her husband, George, is long passed.  Most of her demanding extended family are gone.  All that's left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.

It's a lot, but it's not enough to keep Eby from calling this her final summer at the lake, and relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand.  Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness and heartbreak and loss.  Now she's all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope, too, thanks to her resilient daughter, Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward.  Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer. . . and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.

One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren't sure they needed in the first place: love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended.  Can they find what they need before it's too late?

At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places. 

My Thoughts:  I loved this book from the cover to the story line.  For me, one look at the cover evoked thoughts of the south and the mystery and magic that is a part of of good  Southern fiction.  The main characters, Kate and her daughter Devin, were very sad in the beginning, as Kate's husband had died.  She had been walking around in a fog for a year, but when she came across an old postcard from Lost Lake something in her woke up.  Without telling her mother-in-law, who had basically been controlling her life for the last year, she packed up her daughter Devin for a road trip.  

Eby, Kate's aunt, was planning on this to be her last summer of running Lost Lake.  Her husband had passed away and many things were dilapidated and in need of repair.  When Kate shows up after so many years had passed, it starts to bring back old memories.  Some of Eby's summer regulars start to show up and together they determine to stop Eby from selling out to a real estate mogul who wants to turn the area into a resort.  

There are some magical, mystical elements to the story - like the alligator that speaks to Devin and only she seems able to see.   He wants her to find a box that he claims will save them and Lost Lake.  Devin herself is a little magical, as only a child can be, with her wise-beyond-her-years attitude and flair for dressing.  Kate and Wes' relationship is also magical - the first boy she ever had feelings for and almost kissed - meeting him again at Lost Lake.

Being at Lost Lake was almost as if time had stood still - the cabins, the lake, the path through the woods.  Makes me remember a lake we would go swimming at when I was a kid, that still holds a little magic in the memories when we go back today. 

Devin looked out over the water.  They didn't look like knees.  They didn't even look like roots.  They looked like the ancient spires of Gothic buildings sticking out of the top of the water, like there was a church under the lake and she and Bulahdeen could only see the top of it. They were clustered in a section close to the bank, no more than a foot or so out of the water.  She got as close to the edge as possible and looked down.  The water moved slightly, and she thought for a moment that she saw a flash of something electric blue at the bottom.  But, then again, the water was so murky that it was hard to tell just where the bottom was.  She didn't see any evidence that the alligator had been here, or that whatever it was he might want her to find was hidden anywhere.  She even put her hand over her good eye and looked around.   (p175, Lost Lake)

I haven't read anything else by Sarah Addison Allen, but Garden Spells has been on my TBR list forever.  I really must read some more of her work as I enjoyed this one immensely.

Purchase Links:

About the author: New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction -- a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter). In college, she majored in literature -- because, as she puts it, "I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate." 

After graduation, Allen began writing seriously. Her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. Booklist called Allen's accomplished debut "spellbindingly charming." The novel became a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, and then a New York Times Bestseller.

Allen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as "Southern-fried magic realism." Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out.

Her published books to date are: Garden Spells (2007), The Sugar Queen (2008), The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010), The Peach Keeper (2011) and Lost Lake (2014). (from Goodreads)

Author Links:

Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest / Website

Review: Autumn in Carthage by Christopher Zenos

Autumn in Carthage

by Christopher Zenos

Nathan Price is a college professor with crippling impairments, seeking escape from his prison of necessity.  One day, in a package of seventeenth-century documents from Salem Village, he stumbles across a letter by his best friend, Jamie, who had disappeared six months before.  The document is dated 1692 -- the height of the Witch Trials.  The only potential lead: a single mention of Carthage, a tiny town in the Wisconsin northern highland.

The mystery catapults Nathan from Chicago to the Wisconsin wilderness.  There, he meets Alanna, heir to an astonishing Mittel-European legacy of power and sacrifice.  In her, and in the gentle townsfolk of Carthage, Nathan finds the refuge for which he has long yearned.  But Simon, the town elder, is driven by demons of his own, and may well be entangled in Jamie's disappearance and that of several Carthaginians, As darkness stretches toward Alanna, Nathan may have no choice but to risk it all. . .

Moving from the grimness of Chicago's South Side to the Wisconsin hinterlands to seventeenth-century Salem, this is a story of love, of sacrifice, of terrible passions -- and of two wounded souls quietly reaching for the deep peace of sanctuary.  

My Thoughts: I find that the more I enjoy the book, the harder it is to write the review - and this book falls into that category.  I really liked Nathan.  He was an accomplished professor, seemed to be well-liked by his peers and his students, but was still flawed with some unnamed mental disorder.  Rather than diminishing his capabilities though, I thought this gave him a greater understanding as to the differences in people and while it may not have made him more accepting, it gave him a different viewpoint.  I loved this passage in one of the earlier chapters, upon overhearing a group of young men discussing a date who had claimed she was bipolar - and laughing about the world being full of crazies.

We are not less than you, you cowardly little snot. We are more than you. We live every day in a world made by and for you, with burdens that would bring you to your knees -- and still manage to outperform you. (p18)

So anyway, Nathan travels to Carthage, Wisconsin in search of his friend Jamie.  He is not sure what he is looking for and comes upon a town while friendly enough, seems to be harboring secrets and mysteries at every turn.  In Alanna he finds a kindred spirit, and is almost afraid to hope that they might have a future together.  She slowly lets him in on the town's big secret, which is that they are time travelers.  

The author has written this book in such a way, as time travel does not seem farfetched at all, but just an alternate life style.  It was not "science fictiony" at all and fit well with the demeanor of the community and the location.  While Carthage seemed like any number of other small communities you might find in the midwest, there were subtle differences that made you realize it was special, wealthy.  The author was so descriptive in telling about Carthage and the surrounding countryside, that I had to look online to see if a Carthage, Wisconsin really existed. (It does not.)

You meet a lot of characters early on in the book, and if you don't pay attention to the chapter subtitles, you might become confused as to who is narrating. The narrators all bring their own flavor to the story, as they should with their different viewpoints.  

I liked the tie-in of Salem and the witch trials.  If Carthaginians and their abilities were discovered, people might very well treat them as they did the so-called witches in Salem. Salem was a very misunderstood community, but there were a few who took in the misplaced Carthaginians, with their funny dress and accent, and helped them remain as inconspicuous as possible.  

The novel wrapped things up in the end, very satisfactorily for me, and I am very glad that I read this book. I wonder if there are any other books in the works regarding escapades of other time travelers in this community. 

~I received a complimentary copy of Autumn in Carthage from Rebecca at The Cadence Group in exchange for my unbiased review.~

Review: The Hollow Ground by Natalie S. Harnett

The Hollow Ground

by Natalie S. Harnett

Inspired by the real-life deadly coal mine fires in now-infamous Centralia, Pennsylvania, and the equally devastated town of Carbondale, THE HOLLOW GROUND  is an extraordinary debut novel with an atmospheric, voice-driven narrative and an indelible sense of place.  Already being compared to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and To Kill a Mockingbird, this evocative story about family and the nature of love between a parent and child introduces a stunning and powerful new voice in literary fiction.

It’s 1961, and the ground is burning beneath eleven-year-old Brigid Howley’s feet.  The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced Brigid and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the Black Lung stricken Gramp.  Tragedy, though, is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the “curse” laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish and Irish-American coal miners.  But the weight of this legacy now rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.  In the aftermath, decades’ old secrets threaten to prove just as dangerous to the Howleys as the burning, hollow ground beneath their feet.

Filled with compelling characters, rich prose, engrossing historical detail, and an extraordinary sense of time and place, THE HOLLOW GROUND is exquisitely crafted and tells an unforgettable story that is certain to move readers. 

My thoughts: Brigid is the narrator of this story, set against the backdrop of the Appalachian coal mine fires of the 1960's.  I had never heard of these fires and found them fascinating, devastating and unbelievable. Brigid tells how her Aunt's house, where they had been living, becomes uninhabitable as the fire nears and literally hollows out the ground beneath their feet. Her family is forced to move to a nearby town and move in with their Grandma and Grandpa.  The fires are raging beneath this town as well.  

I liked Brigid as a narrator.  She didn't sugar coat anything and she also did not feel sorry for herself or her circumstances.  Her family is very dysfunctional and she if basically raising herself.  As secrets continue to be revealed, including the answers to a murder mystery, what she thought she knew about her family also continues to change. 

I really liked this book.  The background was such a stark contrast to the voice of Brigid.  I read this book awhile ago and the story has really stayed with me.  This was a debut book for Natalie Harnett and I look forward to seeing what else she writes in the future.

"Auntie?" I shouted through the sliver of screen visible where the window was open.  There was no answer.  The flecks of snow had thickened to flakes that had a tinge of yellow to them.  The color was odd and pretty all at once and I couldn't decide if it reminded me of something sick or of something lit up just barely by sun.  Dying light, I decided, remembering a poem Auntie had read to me.  And then I got afraid. (The Hollow Ground, p20)

~I received a complimentary copy of The Hollow Ground from Get Red PR and Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review.~

Purchase Links:

About the author:  NATALIE S. HARNETT is an MFA graduate of Columbia. She has been awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship, a Summer Literary Seminars Fellowship, and a Vermont Studio Center Writer’s Grant, and was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Fiction. Harnett has been published in The New York Times, The Madison Review and The MacGuffin. She lives on Long Island with her husband and toddler. 

Author Links:

Website / Facebook

Blog Tour: Synchrony by Cindy Ray Hale

This is my stop during the blog tour for Synchrony (Destiny #2) by Cindy Ray Hale. This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours . The blog tour runs from May 5 till May 25, you can view the complete tour schedule here. I am running a few days behind for this blog tour and for that I apologize.  I read both the first book in this trilogy, Destiny, as well as Synchrony which is book two.  I have shared my thoughts below.

Destiny

(Book 1 of Destiny Trilogy)

Cindy Ray Hale

Genre: Contemporary Romance, YA

Destiny Clark, a young Mormon girl living in Tennessee, is wildly infatuated with Isaac Robinson, the headmaster's son at her Baptist high school. When they're cast together in the school's production of Les Misérables, Destiny is horrified to find that she has to be publicly humiliated by acting out her true feelings of rejection onstage. 

As their rehearsals begin, Destiny realizes the unimaginable: Isaac has developed deep feelings for her despite their religious differences and the fact that he has a girlfriend. 

But will they be able to find their place amongst the backbiters of their ultra-conservative world?

Weaving around Destiny and Isaac's alternating viewpoints, Destiny is the first book in a series inspired by the characters of Les Misérables and explores heartbreak, self-discovery, intolerance, and love.

Synchrony

(Book 2 of Destiny Trilogy)

Genre: Contemporary Romance, YA
Release Date: April 8, 2014

When her parents discover she’s been sneaking out with Isaac Robinson, the forbidden Baptist boy, Mormon girl Destiny Clark decides it’s time to keep their relationship quiet. As their relationship moves to shakier ground, Destiny discovers that Isaac has a terrible secret, and she is left completely shattered.

The moment Destiny feels all hope is lost, Preston Nelson, her longtime church friend and Isaac's bitter rival, arrives like a beacon of light. It isn't long before two separate disasters strike for Preston and Destiny's best friend, Hannah. As Destiny helps them through their issues, she discovers that sometimes the best way to forget about your own problems is to help a friend in need.

Just as her heart begins to mend and her friendship with Preston begins to heat up, Isaac walks back into her life, threatening to rekindle the feelings she’d hoped to bury forever. Will Destiny and Preston find the synchrony they so desperately need, or will she find a way to forgive Isaac and return to his outstretched arms?

My thoughts: I am going to review these books as one.  Because I read them back to back I am not sure where the story ended and the second one picked up.  I liked these books and the whole lover's triangle between Destiny, Isaac, and Preston.  Barring the religious undertones, I bet you can find at least one triangle like this in every high school in America.  

Destiny is only 15 when the book starts and is a Mormon attending Bethel Baptist  High School.  Her family are the only Mormon's that attend and they were former members of Bethel Baptist Church.  When they converted, a lot of their friends didn't understand and broke off the friendship.  While her brother Michael seems to be very well-liked, Destiny doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere. At the start of the school year she only has two girls that she calls friends, and one of them turns out to be Isaac's cousin.  

There are actually two more books coming out, Complexity - book 2.5 and Harmony - book 3.  I am going to have to read these because I want to know what happens with these three!  There is also some smaller stories going on - one with Destiny's best friend Hannah and her boyfriend and another with Destiny's little sister Olivia, and a would be suitor.  Both could be explosive all on their own.

Now that I have shared what I liked about the books, I do have to let you know about something that bothered me.  I am a born-again Christian and felt a little bit like the Christians in this book weren't represented very well.  They seemed to be the ones who were unaccepting, rumor mongerers, druggies, and having pre-marital sex.  The Mormons on the other hand, all had close knit families, watched out for their siblings, dressed conservatively etc.  And it wasn't until Isaac, (Christian) decides to learn more about the Mormon religion that he is portrayed in a much better light.  I understand that this is central to the story line, the different religions and the conflicts between the two, but you don't run into very many good Christians in this story. Meanwhile, even though the Mormons are breaking some house rules, there is no comparison to what their Christian counterparts are doing.  I am wondering if some of this is going to change in the next books though and look forward to finding out. 

You can watch the book trailer here:

Are you Team Isaac?

Or Team Preston?

About the Author:  Cindy Ray Hale lives in a little slice of wooded heaven near Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and children. She spends way too much time following up-and-coming musicians on YouTube and dreams of joining their ranks one day. She’s a bit of a health food nut and can’t live without her daily green smoothies. She tries to stay sane as she juggles writing with four kids, staying active on social media, and keeping up her book blog at http://cinnamoncindy.blogspot.com/. In addition to writing and self-publishing two Young Adult Contemporary novels, she has also written articles for "New Era" magazine and The American Preppers Network.

For more information on The Destiny Trilogy and Cindy’s upcoming books visit http://destinybycindyhale.blogspot.com/ or follow @CindyRayHale on Twitter.

Author Links: 
Website /  Website for destiny /  Blog / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Google+ / Pinterest



There is a tour wide giveaway for the blog tour of Synchrony. These are the prizes you can win:

- A $25 Amazon Gift Card (INTL), and a Destiny Swag Pack which includes: a signed copy of Destiny, a signed copy of Synchrony, a Destiny bookmark, a Destiny magnet, a Destiny keychain, and a Synchrony keychain.

- An ecopy of My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century by Rachel Harris and a swag pack

- A Camp Boyfriend swag pack by JK Rock

- An ecopy of Definitely, Maybe in Love by Ophelia London.



For a chance to win, enter the rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge: Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Here is the second review book for the BookSparks 2014 Summer Reading Challenge.  I don't know about you - but it hasn't felt like spring around here yet, let alone summer!  We saw snow earlier this week - Winter, I am so over you!

Love and Other Foreign Words

by Erin McCahan

Josie lives her life in translation.  She speaks High School, College, Friends, Boyfriends, Break-ups, and even the language of Beautiful Girls.  But none of these is her native tongue.  And Love?  The most foreign language of all.  So when being fluent in True Love becomes the only way to avert a sure catastrophe, Josie is forced to examine her feelings for the boy who says he loves her, the sister she loves but doesn't always like, and the best friend who hasn't said a word -- at least not in a language Josie understands.  

Insightful, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is an irrepressible love story about sisters, friends, boys, and how it feels to find someone, at last, who speaks your language. 

My thoughts: I loved Josie!  She was funny, smart, loyal - but it was probably her quick-wit and dry humor that endeared me to her the most.  I wish that I could be as quick with the comebacks.  As her family says, she is 15 going on 30 - and she juggles as much as some 30 year olds.  She is a sophomore in high school in the afternoon, but as part of an accelerated program she is also a freshman in college in the mornings.  She plays volleyball, runs track, and is very close with her family - which include two older sisters.  

She is okay with her oldest sister's husband, but when her middle sister comes home engaged, she has a hard time finding anything to like about him.  She spends the majority of the book trying to find reasons to make her sister break up with him, or at least to make her family see that they are not right together.  She is enthralled with languages and believes that everyone has their own language, and you won't really fit in if you don't speak their language. 

This made me think about the situations that I find personally to be the most uncomfortable - and when it comes down to it, it is because I don't feel that I will be able to speak the right language to fit in.  Knowing this, I think it will make me approach some situations differently - and without such trepidation.  

Something else that she wrote that stuck with me is "It's easier to hate than to hurt."  Just think about that for awhile and I am sure you will come up with an instance that you could apply this to your own life.  I am passing this book along to my daughters.

~I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookSparks PR in exchange for my unbiased review.~

Purchase Links:

Kindle:

Paperback: 

About the author: Erin McCahan is the author of the YA book I Now Pronounce You Someone Else (Scholastic, June 2010). 
Erin’s debut novel was a 2010 Cybils Award finalist. She grew up in Michigan and worked extensively 
with teenagers before beginning her writing career. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. 

Author Links:
Facebook / Website / Twitter / Goodreads

All the books for the challenge:

May:

The One and Only by Emily Giffin - reviewed May 12

Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick

June:

The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmieri

The Revealed by Jessica Hickam

The Walk In Closet by Abdi Nazemian

July:

Elly in Love by Colleen Oakes

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Serenade by Emily Kiebel

Queen of Hearts Vol. 2 by Colleen Oakes

August:

Gravel on the Side of the Road by Kris Raddish

The Curse of Van Gogh by Paul Hoppe

Wild Within by Melissa Hart

Add-ons

My Last Kiss by Bethany Neal

In Bloom by Katie Delahanty

Review: The Faerie Guardian by Rachel Morgan

The Faerie Guardian

(Creepy Hollow #1)

by Rachel Morgan

A faerie girl.

A human boy.

A magical world.

A dangerous plot.

Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until a cute human boy who can somehow see through her faerie glamour follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.

The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? Not when you factor in evil faeries, long-lost family members, and inconvenient feelings of the romantic kind. Vi is about to find herself tangled up in a dangerous plot—and it’ll take all her training to get out of it alive.

My thoughts: This was a fun, pretty quick read and I definitely want to continue on in the series.  Even though in the book, Vi doesn't have a lot of friends, she is a very sympathetic character.  Especially as you get into the book and learn more about her.  There is a lot of action and it was fun to visit this fantastical world of faeries, trolls, pixies, half-lings, etc.   The author does a good job of describing the magic that they have.  It is always interesting to see what an author will come up with to make her characters special in the magical sense.  

Vi's life ends up pretty messy by the end of the book, friends become enemies, enemies become friends and you can't really trust what you know.  This book continues on with The Faerie Prince and book 3 is The Faerie War.  

~I received a complimentary ecopy of this book from Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for my unbiased review.~

BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge: The One and Only by Emily Giffin

I am very excited to be a part of BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge and am kicking it off with my reivew of The One and Only by Emily Giffin!  To see a full list of the review books, continue reading to the bottom of the post.

The One and Only

by Emily Giffin

Thirty-three-year-old Shea Rigsby has spent her entire life in Walker, Texas—a small college town that lives and dies by football, a passion she unabashedly shares. Raised alongside her best friend, Lucy, the daughter of Walker’s legendary head coach, Clive Carr, Shea was too devoted to her hometown team to leave. Instead she stayed in Walker for college, even taking a job in the university athletic department after graduation, where she has remained for more than a decade.

But when an unexpected tragedy strikes the tight-knit Walker community, Shea’s comfortable world is upended, and she begins to wonder if the life she’s chosen is really enough for her. As she finally gives up her safety net to set out on an unexpected path, Shea discovers unsettling truths about the people and things she has always trusted most—and is forced to confront her deepest desires, fears, and secrets.

Thoughtful, funny, and brilliantly observed, The One & Only is a luminous novel about finding your passion, following your heart, and, most of all, believing in something bigger than yourself . . . the one and only thing that truly makes life worth living.

My thoughts:  This book started out slow for me, but I was interested enough in Shea that I kept reading.  I soon became invested in Shea's life, wanting to know who she would end up with as well as what career path she would take.  

Shea was raised by her mother, but considers her best friend Lucy's family as her own as well.  When Lucy's mother Connie dies, it leaves a hole in all of their lives, including Coach Carr, her husband, who is also the winning coach of Walker football and has been for years.  Shea's relationship with Coach Carr has changed over the years, from him being her best friend's dad, to mentor, to friend.  She understands and is involved in football in a way that Lucy is not, so is closer to coach than his own daughter.  He has most recently given her a lead on a job that would finally get her out of the Walker atmosphere and start a life of her own.  

The relationships in this book were complex and messy.  And that is what I liked best.  The author does not back away from the uncomfortable, but meets it head on.  She explores unlikely attractions as well as unhealthy ones.  She shows us that what might appear perfect on the outside sometimes hides ugly secrets and the things that make us uncomfortable might really be what's worth fighting for.

I will definitely pick up another book by Emily Giffin!

~I received a complimentary ecopy of The One and Only from BookSparks and Net Galley in exchange for my unbiased review as part of the BookSparks Summer Reading Challenge.~

Purchase Links: 

THE ONE AND ONLY
by Emily Giffin
Random House; May 20, 2014
432 pages; $28.00 U.S.
ISBN- 978-0-345-54688-3

Check out all the great books that will be reviewed this summer!

May:

The One and Only by Emily Giffin

Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Cure for the Common Breakup by Beth Kendrick

June:

The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmieri

The Revealed by Jessica Hickam

The Walk In Closet by Abdi Nazemian

July:

Elly in Love by Colleen Oakes

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Serenade by Emily Kiebel

Queen of Hearts Vol. 2 by Colleen Oakes

August:

Gravel on the Side of the Road by Kris Raddish

The Curse of Van Gogh by Paul Hoppe

Wild Within by Melissa Hart

Add-ons

My Last Kiss by Bethany Neal

In Bloom by Katie Delahanty

Review: When We Met by Susan Mallery

When We Met

(Fool's Gold, #13)

by Susan Mallery

New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery invites you back to Fool's Gold, where a newcomer to town might finally meet the man she never knew she needed. . .

Angel Whittaker earned his scars the hard way, but the scars that can't be seen are the ones that haunt him the most.  Since he moved to Fool's Gold, California, he's cobbled together a life for himself as a bodyguard trainer.  If he's not exactly happy, at least his heart is safe.

Working with pro-football superstars taught tough-talking PR woman Taryn Crawford one thing -- she can go toe-to-toe with any man.  But then dark, dangerous former Special Ops Angel targets her for seduction. . . and challenges her to resist his tempting kisses.

Even in four-inch heels, Taryn never backs down.  Unless, somehow, Angel can convince her that surrender might feel even better than victory. 

My thoughts: Taryn and Angel were both mentioned in the last book and it was fun to see that storyline picked up in When We Met.  Neither is looking for a relationship - Angel because he had a family once - and he felt that he couldn't keep them safe - so didn't want to travel that path again.  Taryn had an ugly childhood and was left scarred by both parents, and feels single is safer if it means never having to trust again.  However. . . they are both open to having a little fun.

Taryn runs a PR firm and bosses around three NFL players, so when she is not at work she likes it that Angel doesn't always play be the rules.  He isn't following the script she is used to which leaves her even more intrigued.  Angel likes it that Taryn doesn't run from a challenge but actually steps up to play.  This makes for an interesting combination as the dating ritual begins, as neither one knows what to expect.

If it was all about the sparks, maybe neither one would be in trouble - but along the way they discover the softer side that they each try to hide.  

I liked this couple very much - both powerful, Taryn in her job, Angel - both physically and at his job.  At the same time, though they try to fight it, they very much love being a part of this small community and giving back.  Taryn might fight that every one is "too nice", but is really enjoying have girlfriends.  And though Angel feels he was coerced into being a Grove Keeper for a group of 7-8 year old girls, he is really enjoying it.  As they get to know each other, they also begin to know themselves better, and they are really not the loners they think they are.

 I have had the opportunity to read only one other Fool's Gold book - Three Little Words, but have found they they read very well as stand alones.  It was fun to recognize some of the other characters in the book and know some of their back story, so I look forward to continuing on in the series and hope to one day have the chance to go back and see where it all started.  

~I was given a copy of When We Met by Meryl Moss Media in exchange for my unbiased review.~

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About the author: SUSAN MALLERY is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 80 novels, with more than 25 million books sold worldwide. Mallery is known for creating characters who feel as real as the folks next door, and for putting them into emotional, often funny situations readers recognize from their own lives. Susan’s books have made Booklist’s Top 10 Romances list in four out of five consecutive years. RT Book Reviews says, “When it comes to heartfelt contemporary romance, Mallery is in a class by herself.” With her popular, ongoing Fool’s Gold series, Susan has reached new heights on the bestsellers lists and has won the hearts of countless new fans. Susan grew up in southern California, moved so many times that her friends stopped writing her address in pen, and now has settled in Seattle with her husband and the most delightfully spoiled little dog who ever lived. Visit Susan online at www.SusanMallery.com.

WHEN WE MET
by Susan Mallery
Harlequin; May 1, 2014
352 pages; $8.99 U.S./$9.99 CAN.
ISBN- 978-0-373-77865-2